Kukla's Korner Hockey

Category: Boston-Bruins

Now is the time for Chiarelli to drop that cool-handed Harvard thing and make something happen. The game tonight is the first of 16 his club will play prior to the Olympic break. It’s a good bet that Bergeron will miss about half those games and Savard will miss upward of a dozen. Trouble.

Without those two top playmakers in uniform, this is a team virtually absent an attack, and that’s precisely what the coach means when he’s talking about the need to be perfect. All of which makes Julien, a defense-anchored coach, preach even more defense to a team that many nights looks too much like that bunch of Trappist Wonks Jacques Lemaire coached for years in St. Paul.

With Julien’s current lineup, it makes sense, but it doesn’t make much of a case for putting pucks in the net at the other end of the ice. Translation: Either the Bruins are going to win by allowing a goal or two, or they aren’t going to win.

While the Bruins coaching staff is left scrambling for line combinations and innovative, new ways to put the same odd-shaped pieces together that still remain healthy, Marc Savard began the long road back to recovery Monday morning at Ristuccia Arena.

Savard was walking gingerly, but without too much of a limp, after being diagnosed last weekend with a Grade 2 tear in the MCL of his right knee – an injury that’s basically a severe sprain of the joint that doesn’t require any surgery….

“I don’t stay [down] on the ice too much. I knew right away when it happened that it was sore and stretched out a bit,” said Savard. “I just wanted to be careful with it and hopefully everything heals up. It’s on a good pace, so hopefully I’ll be back sooner rather than later.

“We haven’t really had our full lineup all year. Hopefully we get rolling into the playoffs and we get a full lineup. Who knows how good we’ll be?”

The Blackhawks laughed off the Bruins’ early lead and pumped four pucks behind Tim Thomas, prompting coach Claude Julien to replace his starter with Tuukka Rask at 10:13 of the second. Chicago added a third-period goal to secure a 5-2 win before 17,565 at TD Garden last night, exposing the Bruins as having neither the skill nor the character to belong on the same ice surface.

“It’s getting to the point where talk is getting so cheap right now,’’ said Blake Wheeler (goal and assist). “Rah-rah speeches, hitting the boards on the bench, that only goes so far. You’ve just got to do it.

“We’ve got to quit treating this like it’s a privilege or a right of ours to play in front of 18,000 people every night and start playing like it’s the most important thing to us. For whatever reason, we’ve lost sight of that night in and night out.’’

more on the game last night plus Marc Savard will have an MRI on his knee today…

The success of the NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park [map] has prompted House Speaker Robert DeLeo to lobby the league for an annual outdoor hockey match featuring the Boston Bruins [team stats].

DeLeo sent a letter to National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman, asking him to consider having an outdoor Bruins game each year somewhere in the Greater Boston area.

“For the NHL, maintaining a permanent outdoor presence in Boston could help to both solidify the league’s base in our area and help ensure a healthy future for the game,” DeLeo wrote in the letter. “It is my hope that this event can be recreated - even if not on New Year’s Day, of course - in the years ahead. As last week’s game showed, fans in Boston - the ‘Hub of Hockey’ and the best sports town in America - are eager to support an outdoor hockey game year after year.”

The NHL season half over, coach Claude Julien sounded like a man who views his team’s effort as only half full - and even less satisfying. Last season’s Jack Adams Award winner as the NHL’s coach of the year sounded fed up.

“We can’t think we are going to win hockey games playing the way we are,’’ Julien said after last night’s 3-2 loss to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden in which the Bruins performed listlessly for more than two periods. “We are just showing up for a period, half a period, whatever, and get ourselves back in the game, get excited. We didn’t even deserve a point tonight. We didn’t get it. We didn’t deserve it.’’...

Julien wants the alleged leaders in the room to do some leading.

“Right now you have to coach, you have to be a cheerleader, you’ve got to wake ’em up . . . you’ve got to do too many things that a coach shouldn’t have to do at this level,’’ he said. “These are professionals and they have to take ownership of their room at some point.’’

So, a quick post on the disappointing NBC rating for the New Year’s day Winter Classic. The overnight rating of 2.6 was down 10.3 percent from 2.9 a year ago. (A rating is the percentage of potential U.S. households tuned in.)...

The problem is, if you’re NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and desperate to be the person responsible for growing the NHL game in the United States, a close, well played game appeals only to hockey’s core audience. The casual fans couldn’t have cared less. Bring on the snow, and, hey, where are Alex and Sid? There were no big names in this game, which is to say Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby weren’t there.

But let’s not get too serious about the Winter Classic. It’s a gimmick, a novelty that earns some extra money for the clubs, and, in a perfect world, would kick-start NBC’s NHL coverage.